I have been reading a lot of diaries here and blogs elsewhere that are filled wtih doom and gloom about the global heating crisis. People experiencing anxiety and depression because of the looming catastrophe is becoming common. I thought you might like a little good news.
Usually when people talk about technological solutions to reducing CO2 levels the ideas are long on theory and short on real world application. I am about to explain not an idea but an ongoing real world experiment that I am conducting (with a huge amount of help).
But before I go on here is a National Geographic article explaining the ideas behind what I am attempting to do.
www.nationalgeographic.com/…
The following quote is the last line from the article linked above.
"Everyone in the U.S. needs to know: We largely have the technology to solve the problem," Pacala says. "All we have to do is start."
I have gone ahead and started.
You can capture CO2. I do it by burning plant waste to create steam to generate power. I run the resulting CO2 exhaust through slaked lime.
I can’t help myself, here is a great link that explains about lime. It is well worth the read.
scifun.chem.wisc.edu/…
The CO2 reacts with the calcium oxide (lime to form) calcium carbonate. In other words I make limestone. But instead of just drying the mixture out I precipate it out. This gives me very small particles of limestone. I then suspend the particles of limestone in water and spray it on my pasture. Those small particles get in the stoma and inside the plant cell the calcium carbonate is broken down into lime and CO2. The CO2 causes the plants to grow faster and bigger thus increasing their biomass.
My pastures, they were all cereal crop fields when I got them, mostly canola, are all perennial grasses. The soil is wicked gumbo, it has almost 60% clay. This makes it crappy, marginal farm land, but it is incredibly dry here and perennial grasses have evolved to take advantage of the clay’s ability to hold mositure.
The reason soil doesn’t sequester even more CO2 is because it is filled with microorganisms that ingest organic carbon and release about half of that back into the environment as CO2. But organic carbon attaches to clay and the clay prevents it from being avaialable to the microorganisms. So I am taking CO2, using the plant to turn it into organic carbon, and the clay to sequester it.
So how do I make money from this? I graze bison (there are no buffalo in North America) on the land, and deer and moose wander through. I harvest all three in a sustainable way, and of course wolves and coyotes take some for themselves. I butcher and sell the meat (I rent a local abattoir). As far as I have gotten, and I need to live another twenty or thirty years to finish the experiment, my land produces more animal protein than it could ever produce if you simply fed the cereal crops to cattle.
I am awaiting results of last year’s analysis but in 2017 I sequestered just over 2,000 tons of CO2. I have been told that is about like taking 380 gasoline powered cars off the road. I hope to be doing ten times that within ten years if my health holds.
The common questions I get are “but your land is special, it has high clay levels, and much farm land is sandy isn’t it?”
Certainly much existing farm land is sandier. But just changing land management in the US and Canada would reduce both countries CO2 emissions by more than 20%. Going as far as I have, on the land that is appropriate, would reduce CO2 emissions by closer to 30%.
And, “but Bison produce methane gas is which is a much more powerul greenhouse gas than CO2?”
This is why I haven’t taken more cars off the road. However, Bison average about 20% less methane than cows, pound for pound. And the meat is much leaner, so you get more protein per milliliter of methane production. Lean meat replacing meat with more fat content means less heart attacks and strokes.
Free ranging ruminants, my Bison go where they choose until they hit the fence, produce less methane than grass fed and far less than factory farmed animals. So free range Bison are a very good way to produce meat protein, and of course their waste is returned to the land to enrich it.
Another common one is, “but shouldn’t you be growing vegetables, we all need to become vegetarians, even vegans.”
I am a vegan. Yes I know, I ranch cattle and bison but I don’t eat them. And next year, we are testing the technology in my back yard this year, I will be starting to grow vegetables at scale at the margins where grassland pasture and Aspen forest meet. The first year we will be doing pumpkins and various kinds of squash.
However, I need the Bison in order to maintain the grassland (the grasses are evolved to be grazed). And when it is grazed it puts out new green growth, and the green growth takes up CO2, it also encourages the plants to put down deeper roots, which stores more organic carbon and prevents it being released as CO2.
I hope this diary and the accompanying National Geographic article give all of you some hope.